Day pass of weirdness
This is my favorite all-day ticket so far. Usually the images are of Austin landscapes or architectural works. This was good for 24 hours’ worth of Austin-weird rides. I wonder how often this image appears in the rotation or whether it’s been recently introduced. At any rate, this Keep Austin Weird pass was new to me.
A fresh Capital Metro schedule goes into effect this coming Sunday, January 28. As always, the update page makes this claim: “Minor schedule adjustments to improve operation.” This language never seems to be used when the change in schedule is to add a run or to shorten wait intervals. The library is always one of the best places to find the new maps and schedule books. Sunday, they weren’t there yet, but they will be. Other locations that supposedly offer the schedule booklets (certain supermarkets, for example) always seem to dig them out grudgingly from a carton in some back room instead of keeping them visible.
In case it’s not legible from the image here, the descriptive language running down the left side of the pass, which might customarily say something like “Plaza Saltillo,” says “a state of mind.”
The best place to pick up a new schedule, IMO, is on a bus. Boxes and boxes of the new books were in the front of every bus earlier this week. I don’t recall seeing any on my ride this afternoon, but then, I wasn’t looking for it.
You’re absolutely right, for those of us who are Riders with a capital “R.” I’m always trying to encourage people not familiar with riding to give it a try. When a car breaks down, for instance, and the repair shop doesn’t offer a ride to work, it’s silly to pay for a taxi or to bother a friend when a bus is fast, cheap, and sensible. Every vehicle-owning Austinite should carry the big book and map in his/her vehicle, just in case. I’m always amazed at how close to the printed schedules the buses are really able to conform and how a driver can let another driver know that there’s a transfer if he/she can wait a bit. I live where I do for bus service.
You haven’t ridden the bus much, huh? Those passes have been around since they switched to the new type of passes about oh…2 years ago, maybe less. i think my first pass (on the first day of the new passes) was this pass.
Two of us here ride the bus several times a week; I mostly walk the rest of the time except for some weekend errands. We’ve been buying the day passes ever since transfers went, although not when it’s a bus-ride one way and a walk the other, which it most often is. (My recollection is that these passes have been out there for a year and a half or so, but I don’t have time to look it up; it seems as though it was during hot weather when they went into service.) Whatever the odds, this is really the first one of these designs that I’ve received, or at least happened to notice. Our visitors are keeping theirs as Austin souvenirs. The color photos always look like like bad ink-jet prints; I like the graphics of this one.
The $5 tickets are a really good deal too, even if they don’t have interesting things printed on them. One ticket gives you 20 rides, or $.25/ride which works out cheaper than a day pass if you only ride the bus one to three times a day. I always bought mine at the Cap Metro store on Congress and I presume they still sell them (I still ride the bus daily but haven’t paid for it since I started working for UT).